American Speech, Vol. 91, No. 4, November 2016 doi 10.1215/00031283-3870141 Copyright 2017 by the American Dialect Society 393 A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF FOLK LINGUISTIC DISCOURSE: THE CASE OF TWANG ELENA RODGERS Oklahoma State University abstract: This article offers a new approach to dialect attitudes and ideologies that combines argumentation theory with conversation-analytic techniques. This rhetorically oriented, qualitative approach is used to explore how socioindexical and language-related meanings of folk linguistic concepts are constructed in conversa- tions among Oklahoma English speakers. “Twang” was selected as a test case because it is often mentioned by nonlinguists as a common descriptor of differences among American English dialects. The analysis reveals a complex socioindexical profile of twang that integrates language-related, spatial, temporal, sociocultural, and historical associations. It also reveals implicit discursive schemes of speech valorization that rep- resent twang as a socially authenticating linguistic resource. Participants use gradient representations of twang to index symbolic social boundaries between unmarked and “lesser” forms of whiteness in the American South. The article shows that propositional processes of sociolinguistic indexicality engage experiential, affective, performative, perceptual, and identity-related processes: participants demonstrate these interrelated engagements when they rationalize, justify, valorize, and illustrate their individual experiences with linguistic variability. keywords: indexicality, twang, folk linguistics, language ideology, discourse, argu- mentation T his article illustrates an application of a rhetorically oriented, discourse-based approach to the study of sociolinguistic indexical relations constructed in metalinguistic discourse. It presents a contextualized analysis of the semiotic complexity of the folk-linguistic notion twang revealed in local, reflexive negotiations of its language-related and social meanings in conversational interaction. As this study demonstrates, the appropriation of the semiotic potential of twang occurs in the discoursal contexts of its integra- tion into a web of indexical associations that link language-related, spatial, temporal, sociocultural, and historical representations, thereby constructing a folk linguistic theory of twang. These associations derive their relative stabil- ity and valorization patterns from language users’ shared understandings of the macrocontextual meanings of the term, but they also acquire context- American Speech Published by Duke University Press